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Bonneville

Every once in a while, Mother Nature has a rather tenuous relationship with her children. Such a scenario plays out each and every year as mankind clings to one of the last vestiges of open space left on our planet, the Bonneville Salt Flats, to which hundreds of men and women each year flock to take out their frustrations with the pace of life by attempting to outdo and one-up the accomplishments of those who dared make a similar attempt in years prior. It's a vicious cycle, and one that depend

The world needs crazy inventors with wild dreams. While we might not long for the things that they create, their contraptions certainly make the day a little more enjoyable. Take the Carpool Deville as an example. Nobody (well, almost nobody) is asking for a hot tub fashioned from a 1969 Cadillac that is still drivable. But now that you know that such a beast exists, don't try to tell us you aren't at least intrigued.

"Enjoy your toys. Don't worry about breaking them, don't worry about scratching them. Just have fun with them," says the owner of the salt-covered Mercedes-Benz Gullwing. No, it's not a new SLS AMG, but an original 300SL that Bob Sirna bought a year out of college in the early 1980s. Since 2001, it has been repurposed as a Bonneville Salt Flats racecar.

Salt fever is an affliction that drives those infected to spend the better part of the year dreaming, scheming and building machines to race across the alien landscape that is the Bonneville Salt Flats in search of land-speed-record glory. Bill Dube and Eva Håkansson have a high-voltage case of it.

When you're royalty, you can associate yourself with things as cool as the world's most powerful electric car, and that's just what Prince Albert of Monaco is doing. The Prince, along with Princess Charlene, made the trek out to the Beehive State to make a photo appearance with the Venturi VBB-3 at Wendower airfield. He was probably hoping to get a quick drive of the 3,000-horsepower rocket on wheels, but that was not meant to be.

You've probably heard of Mickey Thompson, if not for racing home-built Indy cars or punting early Funny Cars down drag strips, perhaps for the tire company he founded, his successful forays into off-road racing or, crucially, his attempts to break land speed records at the Bonneville Salt Flats. In 1960, he became the fastest man in the world after going 406 miles per hour in his race car, the brutish four-engined Challenger I, but the record was never completed and made official due to a breakd

Sometimes you meet folks who, when they tell you "Hey, I have an idea," your reflex response is to stop what you're doing and tell yourself, "Get ready...." We imagine Mike Niemans is one of those folks, and the idea in question is putting a tank engine on a Type 1 Volkswagen Beetle. Not just any old tank engine – as if there were such a thing when we're talking about putting them in cars – but a 668-cubic-inch, 220-horsepower radial engine built by Continental in 1941 and procured f

James Hoegh's mission to go faster than 168.912 mph on a naked bike on the Bonneville Salt Flats has met success. Hoegh traversed the salt during the BUB Motorcycle Speed Trials at 172.211 mph, entering the books in the APF3000 class as the rider on the world's fastest big block American V-twin.

Brandon Nozaki Miller – A.K.A. the Electric Cowboy – is on a mission: to prove you don't need big-time money to have big-time fun competing on an electric motorcycle. To help make his case, he's just set several land speed records on the Bonneville Salt Flats.

In 2010, James Hoegh rode his Confederate P120 Fighter motorcycle across the Bonneville Salt Flats and reached 159 miles per hour. A little later he went back and got that up to 162.6 mph. This year he's going back to the BUB Motorcycle Speed Trials in Bonneville to try and hit 170 mph, which would break the record of 168.912 mph in the APF3000 class, set last year by Wink Ellis.

We don't envy the designers who pen bikes for the likes of Triumph or Harley-Davidson. Machines like the Bonneville and Sportster are inherently popular for their nostalgic looks, and die-hard fans are the first to cry foul when the bikes wander too far from the original recipe. As the Triumph Bonneville Speed Twin Concept elegantly illustrates, that's a crying shame. As the brainchild of English designers Roy Norton and Tom Kasher, the Speed Twin is a modern take on the classic Bonneville. The

Ah, the Bonneville Salt flats. One of the last true bastions of speed left in America, where men and women take cars, trucks, motorcycles and just about anything else with wheels to the very limits of man and machine's capabilities.

Hemmings reports that Craig Breedlove is preparing to jump back into the land speed record game in an attempt to break through the 800 mph barrier. Breedlove made a name for himself while vying with Art Arfons for the world land speed record back in the '60s. His efforts eventually landed him the title in his jet-powered Sonic 1, and he would later set a total of 23 FIA speed records at the Bonneville Salt Flats in a 1965 Shelby Daytona Coupe. Breedlove was recently named the recipient of the Si

Our favorite automotive web series has returned with a new episode. Josh Clason and his Depth of Speed crew traveled to the Bonneville Salt Flats. In the new video, A Pinch of Salt, the drivers interviewed all point out that the motorsports atmosphere in the middle of this barren patch of Utah salt is uniquely friendly. It's another well-told story with excellent production values. Click past the jump to check it out.